This story is part of the series CriticsCorner

TV tonight: 'Voice' vs. 'Idol,' 'The Middle'

Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
12 a.m. EDT May 8, 2013

What's worth watching, and what might not be, in prime time on Wednesday.

'The Middle': Frankie (Patricia Heaton) plants Mother's Day gift hints with Brick (Atticus Shaffer) in the other kids in hopes they will steer her husband in the right direction.(Photo: Michael Ansell, ABC)

TV's two most popular singing contests go head to head tonight, as NBC pits The Voice's revelation of its Top 12 against a performance by the top three on Fox's American Idol. In hopes of improving Idol's chances (and boosting its falling ratings), Fox is throwing in the debut of Mariah Carey's new music video — though what the show really needed to do was get Carey a judging mentor and squelch her feud (real or invented) with Nicki Minaj rather than trying to milk it for publicity. The Voice hasn't passed Idol in the ratings because of the quality of its contestants; it did so because the chemistry on Idol is both off and off-putting, a dangerous combination.

The Middle is one of the few sitcoms these days that can do a Mother's Day episode from the perspective of the mother, and one of even fewer that you can reliably count on to do it well. Tonight, Frankie tells her kids what she wants for the holiday, hoping one of them will tell Mike.

Criminal Minds | CBS, 9 ET/PT

And then there's Criminal Minds, which has its own take on the maternal holiday: a criminal who is kidnapping nannies and the children they care for. Won't that set every mother's heart aglow? We're still waiting to hear whether CBS will renew this series, a decision that apparently hinges in part on whether the stars renew their contracts. Consider this one of those cases where it's worth rooting for deals to fall through.